Hirooo

Greetings Skylords!

It's been three weeks since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn.
This update is kind of a Bandits-Special, with new card reveals, a Deep Dive for the faction and insight in the process of adding a new PvP card. Let's get started!

Anniversary Stream Announcement
Mark your calendars because we have some celebrating to do! On December 18th, Skylords Reborn reaches its 1-year anniversary. It has been a wild ride; from resurrecting the game to a playable state, to actively developing new features and even brand new cards. 
Join us for a special anniversary stream on December 17th with news, card reveals, give-aways and more, celebrating the past, present and future of Skylords Reborn! More details will be shared in the coming weeks. We hope to see you there!

New Card Reveal
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, its numbers and effects might still change. We hope to release this card before the end of the year and will share more information at a later date. 
Today we are excited to reveal a card that might see play in both PvP and PvE, and solve some of the problems Bandits have in PvP. 
            


Bandit Minefield is a tier 2 Spell for Fire/Shadow. Upgrading the card reduces its cooldown (up to 10 seconds) and powercost (80 to 70). It will be a rare and won't have an affinity. Here is how the card works:
Creates 4 clusters of mines in a line of 20m. If a hostile ground unit gets as close as 10m to a cluster, its mines will detonate in 6 bursting waves. Each wave deals 100 damage to hostile units and 25 damage to buildings in a 15m radius, up to 300 in total. If no enemy approaches a cluster within 10 seconds, its mines will disappear again. Affects ground targets only. Cannot damage wall segments, Power Wells or Monuments. Cannot be placed nearby hostile units or structures, excluding walls. Knocks back small units. Reusable every 35/35/35/25 seconds.
Bandit Minefield requires the selection of source and target location. Mines will be placed in a straight line in the direction you choose. 
 
Design and expected use
Because this is our first new card that will see play in the PvP-meta, we asked our designer RadicalX to share some insights about the design process of the card. We cover why the card was created, what role it has in the meta and how it was changed during testing. Bandits has been one of the weaker factions in PvP, so we are very excited to see how this new tool will help them out. 
Bandit_Minefield_Design_Choices.pdf
 
Affinity and Rarity
A quick word about this cards rarity and lack of affinity. Affinities were added to every expansion of BattleForge, mostly as a way to increase the number of cards in each expansion. While there are some cards where the different affinities result in interesting choices, there are also a lot of cards that struggle under this design restriction. The Skylord Reborn team decided that going forward, we will add affinities where they feel right, but leave them out when we can't add a meaningful difference between them, or adding them would undermine what the card is supposed to do. 
As for the rarity, we actually wrote a document about rarity, and according to those guidelines, Bandit Minefield will be a rare. It is worth noting that Bandit Minefield will be added to the free PvP-bandit deck. We expect this card to be crucial in the PvP scene, and find it important that everyone who wants to play PvP can do so without grinding for cards or upgrades first. 

Artwork
The artwork has been designed by our talented artist Tweeto, and we thought it would be cool to share some sketches to show you the progress. 

As always, a lot of time and changes went into this artwork. A big thanks to Tweeto for constantly accepting feedback and improving the artwork. We are really happy with the final result, and hope you are too! 
 
Vote for Cardnames
Just like with Coat of Protection and Wasteland Wing, we need your suggestions for the final cardname. During testing we came up with the cardname ''Bandit Minefield" and ''Treacherous Path" as the effect name. However, part of our promise to our Patrons is to let them help with naming new cards based on suggestions from the community. For this, we will need your help!
Please reply in the comments below what you feel is the perfect cardname for this card and how you would name the ability.  
Example:
Name: Bandit Minefield
Ability: Treacherous Path
Please only suggest one name. We will collect all the suggestions and let our Avatar-of-Frost-tier (and higher) Patrons vote for the final name, starting next week. 
 

Bandit Deep Dive
Back in July we shared our Deep Dive into Frost; an exploration into what makes the faction tick and how we planned to tackle the issues Pure Frost struggled with. We have since then shifted our focus away from the frosty Lyrish Reaches and moved on to the scorching Southern Wastes; attached you will find the Bandits Deep Dive!
In this document we will be exploring the Bandits-faction in detail, including upcoming changes and even a tease of another new card! It is our goal with documents such as these to give our players a glimpse into how we think about factions and where we are planning to take the game.
Bandits_Deep_Dive.pdf
Upcoming Tournaments & Events
NEW: Official PvE Contest#4 Winter is coming - Until 17.12.2021
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Guns of Lyr, while accomplishing several winter and Christmas themed objectives. This event has a point system and boosters for the top performers. Check out the rules and how to apply here and have fun!

FINISHED: Official PvE Contest#3 Skylords Raid
Our 3th PvE contest has concluded, thanks to everyone who participated! Originally the idea was to have a stream, but because we are already streaming for our anniversary and most of the runs used the same tactics, the winners will instead be announced through a youtube video in the near-future. We also saw a lot less participants in this style of contest, so we will try to stay away from multiple-map contests in the future.
 
• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organisers Hiko or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
New Team Members / Open Positions
We are very happy to announce a new addition to our team: RookieN has joined the team as a Map Designer / Map Developer / Map Artist! You can expect great things from him, and we hope to be able to share them soon. 
We also added another Event Manager to the team; Metagross will work together with our other Event Manager Hiko to provide you with a steady stream of contests and tournaments. His community contest on King's Ridge was a success, so we are happy to officially welcome him to the team. 
At the same time we are sad to see Kerkk leave the team as a Web Developer. He unfortunately does not have enough time to help us out anymore. We would like to thank him for his time and all he did for Skylords Reborn! 
Last Community Update we posted our cry for help for Balance Developers, and we are very grateful for the response. We hope to add new Balance Developers to the team soon, who will help us implement new cards and balance changes. We did experience some delays because of the lack of staff for quite a while now, but we hope this will improve with new members being added to the team. This is always an area that we need help with, so if you are still interested, please let us know. 
There are still some other areas we would like additional help to expand and grow Skylords Reborn. If you want to help, we would love to have you on our team. Below we have highlighted some roles, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk! 
 
NEW: Open Position - Video Editor
As a video editor you are responsible for creating exciting video content for Skylords Reborn. This can range from short card reveal videos to exciting trailers and cutting up Twitch-stream content for highlight videos on our Youtube channel. If you have any experience with audio post production, you can also help us out with the process of adding new voice-lines and sound effects into the game. More Information.

Open Position - Artist
While we absolutely love Tweeto's output, one artist can only do so much. As an artist you are responsible to create the visuals required for new content. This is a broad position and there are many areas where you could help in, depending on your skills and interests. Think of loading screen artwork for new maps, card artwork for new cards, visual UI elements for new features that involve adding UI to the game, banners for events/tournaments/community challenges/large game updates etc. More Information.

Open Position - Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn and to attract veteran and new players alike. This includes actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, youtubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. More Information.

In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S15B
The code is valid till December 25th.
We will update you again on December 18th, during our 1-year anniversary! The next community update will probably stick to the 3 week schedule, meaning it will be posted on the 25th. 
As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know! 
Archive
Community Update #12
Community Update #13
Community Update #14

Hey all!
The contest is over and the participation was overwhelming - I thank you all for that. Love you folks
All in all I got 33 replays, of which 24 where valid (3 double/6 invalid because of not opened chests).
70 unique Players participated, that where more then in any other official contest so far (no guarantee on that).
The Players with the most runs where:
Paxvobiscum with 5 entries
Damo with 4 entries
and Subnnobs, Malolo, Taylor, AntonWsh and Janjua each with 3 entries

I thank you very much for your replays. We will look out for the hot scenes and present you the highlight in the Stream on the 07.11.2021. Of course we will present you a full ranking then and hope for your patience until then! Keep the up!

New record for the insane god 4:16.3
Donaar and Gam3over

New time for Treasure Fleet expert Dutchy: 14.49.00

New time for rPvE 10 1player 

Since I see you added 4p rPvE 9 to rankings, here is my solo map of the month difficulty 9 best time, from last month.

Hello Skyfolks!
 
Even though not everyone plays it, 4 player rPvE lvl 9 battlegrounds is probably the most popular game mode in general. About time for a competition! The latest big balance patch, which has been around for a while now, made me realize I've never seen a rPvE match with 4 different colors. I'm curious to see your replays!
Since I can't participate in my own contest, of course, I'd be happy to spend some time with you, if you'd like. Let's see how I can help!
Replay analysis - strategic tips
Anyone who has played their first rPvE lvl10, or speedrun with me knows I am a patient teacher and will gladly share ALL my knowledge if you just ask for it.
And even if competitions are aimed at players above the average, we also know that there are (hopefully) many very good players who want to participate, but whose experience in speedrun is much smaller.
That's why I'm happy to offer my strategic support to any team that wants it. Deckbuilding, routes, interaction, little tricks - I'll be happy to take a look at your replays over the next few weeks and try to support you from the outside as much as possible.
My only condition: provide me with a replay and ask specific questions about it. If I see something obvious outside of the questions, I will of course mention it.
I just want to make sure that you make the same effort as I do and not have a lot of theoretical discussions in advance.
 
Team finding
Although I would not recommend you to take this service, I would like to offer it: If you are looking for a "fixed" group for this contest, but can't find any players ingame or on Discord, feel free to contact me - if there are enough players, I can help you to group up. If necessary, you can also register here as a group of 2 or 3 and I will help you find the last members.
However, I strongly recommend you to actively form your groups yourself via Discord or ingame, otherwise you will lose valuable time and players will hang in the queue until I have 4 requests together.
 
General tips
There are free voice chats in the official Skylords Reborn Discord - use them! I promise you, the top teams will be those, who had fast and good communication. Act as team. Ask yourselves constantly: What can I do for my companions? How could my team support me in my task? Teamwork and strategy are worth more than any good individual performance. Stick to the meta (as far as possible). Voidreturn is usually essential in Speedruns. This should (presumably) be your first priority, to which you subordinate EVERYTHING else. Do not hesitate to restart! Once the basic framework of a strategy is in place and a first time has been reached, it is often not worth finishing games where a lot has already gone wrong. Talk to each other and just restart the round! And please keep in mind that there are harder tasks and easier ones. It is not uncommon for the same player to ask for a restart over and over again. This may not be because your teammate is bad, but often because their task is difficult. Speedruns are often at the limit, otherwise they wouldn't be a speedrun, so things just go wrong sometimes. Think outside of the box!  
I wish all participants a lot of fun! And if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
 
 

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.
Welcome to the first official rPvE event!
We hope you will have a lot of fun with this event!


What kind of event will it be?

rPvE/Battlegrounds 4player - Map of the Month - Difficulty 9
Join us in an invasion against the bandit camps that endangers the human realm.
Be fast, be quick and do not forget the gold!
We are weakened and limited, gather together fellow skylords!
The old Amii structure can not help us in this conquest.

In order to defeat our enemies quickly, Volin will be happy to provide you with strategic advice.

When will it start?

We will be accepting entries starting 11.10.2021 00:00 CET.
The event will run for approximately 2 weeks, so you have time until the beginning of the last week of October.
To be specific: 25.10.2021 23:59 CET.
You can send your replays through DM to Volin on Discord (Volin#8101) or through a PM to him on the forum.

Stream, when?

We will stream the Event conclusion on Saturday, the 6th of November Sunday, the 7th of November 13:00 CET on the official Skylords channel via Twitch.

How can I participate?

You just have to send in your fastest replay, including the player names. [Note: Your entry has to be a victory]
For example: "Hiko, Majora, Volin, Toggy"

Please note: You are allowed to send in different replays, but only the fastest one will count. This means that if you compete with multiple teams, the one that reached the best time will also be your personal best time.

You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays

What are the rules?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The team with the fastest time wins. Only mono color decks (colorless cards are allowed). Every team member has to play with a different color. Collect all gold chests. No Amii monument. Only Map of the Month. Have fun! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Sounds fun! What's the prize pool?

The following prize pool will be adjusted according to the amount of participants.
The prices are per person. If you compete with multiple teams, only your highest place will be rewarded:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1st place               10 general Booster packs
2nd place              9 general Booster packs
3rd place               8 general Booster packs
4th place               7 general Booster packs
5th-8th place        6 general Booster packs
9th place               4 general Booster packs
10th place             3 general Booster pack
11th-12th place    2 general Booster pack
13th-15th place    1 general Booster pack

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In conclusion

This event focuses on your speed and teamwork on this rPvE map.

To summarize the event in simple steps:
Look for a team. You can either do this below this topic, on Discord or Ingame. Scout the map. Decide who plays which color and which position. Run the Map. Collect all gold chests. Satisfied? Send the replay to Volin! (Volin#8101 on Discord) or PM your best replay to him (in the forum).


Future events
If you are interested in helping with these kind of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send me a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (Minashigo Hiko#1126).
We are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event. We are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team and Volin

Update on the rPvE Map of the Month difficulty 9 record: 
7:24.1
 
 

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

New Logo
Already teased in the updated Discord icons and Facebook profile, we also have a new logo! We are very happy with our fresh new look, which inspired us to also take another look at our landing page. Nothing to share yet there, but we are currently in the first stages of a redesign, and hope to share more with you in the future.
We'd also like to take this time to let you know we are going to post these Community Updates on our Reddit as well. Please make sure to follow us there if that is your preferred platform to stay up to date on Skylords Reborn. 

New cards are now in development
As mentioned in the last Community Update, the exciting moment has come to design brand new cards for the game. We will release these new cards in batches, instead of a full expansion. Our plan for the first batch is to create new cards for 3 different factions, with up to 9 cards added in total. We are also planning to add affinities to some, if not all, of these cards.
The past week, patrons with the Moon tier or higher were able to vote for their favorite factions. We are excited to announce the 3 factions that will receive new cards:
- Frost
- Amii (Shadow / Nature)
- Bandits (Shadow / Fire)

Don't worry, we plan to add new cards for each faction over time, the voting only impacted the order of our release. Since this is new territory for us, we are currently not able to say when new cards will be ready, and when the vote for the next batch will be. We will be actively working on this, but we don't want to rush out new cards.
 

Expansion Icon

New cards need a new expansion icon! The community was able to vote for their favorite icon on our social media (Twitter, Discord, Facebook and Reddit). All icons (from left to right: Phoenix, Ouroboros, Triskelion and Lotus) were symbols of Rebirth, which we found fitting for the current stage of the project. The votes were extremely close, with our Discord community heavily leaning towards Ouroboros, while the other media were rallying behind the Phoenix icon. Here is the icon you can expect on our upcoming cards (not just the factions mentioned above):


Until further notice, all upcoming Skylords Reborn cards will have this icon. We are also looking into creating multiple versions of this expansion symbol, depending on the rarity. And of course not all cards will be ultra rare. Please note again: new cards have now started development, but we have no specific cards to share at this moment. 
Thank you all for your votes and comments, and thank you Tweeto for your awesome work!

New Patch on the test server

A lot is happening on the test server as well. A large patch has hit the test server on the 9th of June. 
The patch contains many balancing changes and experimental changes. Please take a look at the patch notes, test them out on the test server and take place in the discussion.
Speaking of discussions, we would like your help in making a decision regarding the card Unity and if it should only effect own units or also allies.
Please check out our Unity poll here.

Upcoming Tournaments
• FINISHED Official PvE Contest#1 Siege of Hope 
The first official PvE contest on Siege of Hope is now finished! We will announce the winners in a stream on the 26th of June at 19:00 CEST.
We will also do some giveaways, so even if you did not participate; we invite you all to join us! 
 
• NEW: Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organiser Hiko to have your events prizes sponsored by the Skylords Reborn team. If you got a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
New Art for Firesworn
Besides a new Logo and Icon, our artist Tweeto has been working on adjusting the art of Firesworn. As most would agree, Firesworn always felt a bit off compared to the other fire cards. Tweeto made a few changes to make it feel more in line with the rest of your deck. We hope you like it! 
 
Current Artwork
 
Adjusted Artwork

The artwork has not yet been adjusted in-game yet. We expect to add it in an upcoming content update to the live server. 
There are still some cards we would like to give a slight upgrade, but we will only do so if there are no other tasks with more priority to work on. With new cards in development, new artworks for those cards currently have more priority. 

New Team Members / Team Changes
Our moderation team welcomes a new (old) member! Bradley will be helping us out with moderation again.
We are also happy to announce our first official Map Designer: Hodron! 
Right now he is spending a lot of time on designing the new rPvE presets mentioned in the last community update; specifically what units and or bosses you will encounter. 
Our developer _empty_ stepped down from his position. He worked on creating the installer used by new players to more easily be able to install and play the game. We would to again thank him for his contributions!
Additionally, we will soon be adding at least one new server developer. 
We have also added a new role into our open positions; Marketeer/Outreach Coordinator. As an Outreach Coordinator you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn and to attract veteran and new players alike. This includes actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested influencers, streamers, youtubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. 

As always; if you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. There are still some open positions in our team.
 

In conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE5
The code is valid till July 3rd. 
Archive
Community Update #1
Community Update #2
Community Update #3
Community Update #4
 

Fire tends to be able to clear these camps by tackling one problem after another to continously open up more room for units to work with.
If you want to summarize the problems on Stonekin maps it usually is:
Windhunters Nox Sniper Deepgorge towers Moloch Construct Just tackle these one by one, usually a front to back approach is the way to go, though it can vary.
Usually early on Windhunters and the Nox Sniper severely hinder your options due to oneshot potential or cc from dragons, but they are also fairly easy to take out so that's the first step.
After that I realized that the Tortugun would turn around later than the construct and can be kited with Nomads easily outside of the tower range. So very easy to take out with Mines aswell.
If that wouldn't have been possible you'd just continue with Skyfire Drakes and Sunstriders. You'd use the Skyfire Drake to lure the Tortugun to your orb slowly. Prepare a few Mines there. Sunstriders to not take damage from the tower while luring. Use Nomads to take hits from the Tortugun and it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Your orb might take damage but should be able to survive. Usually 4-5 Skyfire are enough.
After that there is no real thread any longer because of Sunstrider (for remaining towers) + Skyfire drake combo.
I'll attach a replay. I did not play perfect here, especially the Tortugun part was poorly executed overall - was my third try and just realized I could do the kiting strategy on this particular map in this run, so it was a bit scuffed.
T3 was fully cleared at 8:35. I think you can get it down to 8 flat for sure or a bit lower than that with a perfect run.
rPvE_1Player_Level10_Stonekin_Pure Fire example t3 clear.pmv
I hope this helped.

Dear Skylords, Skyladies, and other skyfolk,
As you may know I've been here a long, long time. 12 years ago on the official forums, and pretty much ever since this project started. Over those years a lot has changed, for better and for worse. Both myself and some of the veterans around here have seen the game and its dev team rise and fall more often than we'd all like to admit, but we prevailed and we held on to Nyn and the wonders of this unique RTS/TCG hybrid. BattleForge has always been a great passion of mine, as a player and as a developer.
But times change, and life changes, and as Skylords Reborn grew to the size and state that it is now, my own time had to be more and more divided. Graduation, running a full-time job, major changes in my personal life and thought processes, and the ongoing pandemic have greatly jumbled up my day-to-day life, my mind, and my available time and energy. This has had quite an impact on how well I can contribute to this project right now, and so I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't feel appropriate to be a part of the SR team for as little work as I'm able to get myself to contribute. 
It's with a heavy heart I'm saying I am, on my own accord, stepping down from the SR team for the time being, but I feel that it's necessary. This is purely personal and has nothing to do with the current team, community, or the game itself; after all, we've accomplished so much, all of us! Thanks to all of you we've actually succeeded in what many thought to be utterly impossible; to revive an entire game purely out of passion, figuring out its inner workings, and altering it to make it a 100% free, enjoyable, non-profit game to keep enjoying despite the studio having long been disbanded. I've had the pleasure of working with an already fantastic community and team on a passion project others would dream of, and over time the team's grown so much.
It's been fantastic working on Skylords for so long and the game and project still are very dear to me. Throughout the years I've learnt tremendously much and have helped to keep things afloat in both bright and darker times for the project; it's been a rollercoaster for all of us. But we got there! We got to a fantastic release and have a whole revitalised and excited team ready to support all of you for a long time to come! This project is now in better hands than I could ever have anticipated, and I am happy and confident to leave Skylords Reborn to some of the most capable people I've had the pleasure of meeting.
I'll be stepping down after having been a long-time admin, CM, moderator and designer, and though I will keep providing some advice and help in the background, I will stop being a dev and remain a player. Perhaps I'll return if my personal life allows for it in the future, but as of right now I simply don't think I can contribute enough. 
It's been an absolute honour being a part of BattleForge's development throughout well over a decade, and I want to thank everybody for their continued work, support and belief in the amazing things we've ended up accomplishing. That includes you, no matter how long you're here or if you even know me. We did it! I'm still so proud of all of us, and I am happy to know the project's in great hands. Keep up the amazing work and let the hype train rage ever onward.
Thanks for everything, until next time, and may the Forge be ever with you!
~MrXLink

Hello Skylords and Skyladies,
Another month, another PvE Contest!
This time it is something special, because we are going to play community maps!
The Map
The map this contest is held on is called "King's Ridge". It is a community map made by Spitzkopf and polished by Emmaerzeh.
In order to play the map, you have to go to the community maps section at the very bottom right of the world map and select King's Ridge from the menu.
Emmaerzeh also made a video, in which he shows the map and plays it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcXKP6QsG9o
What?
We are having a Speedrun contest on the community map King's Ridge with extra rules.
The contest is split into two different challenges:
1. The silver challenge:
The silver challenge is the easier version of the contest. In order to compete in the silver challenge, you have to beat King's Ridge on Advanced difficulty without the use of Amii Monument and Enlightenment.
Send me the replay of your fastest attempt via discord or here on the forums. You can find the replays under Documents=>battleforge=>replays.
2. The gold challenge:
The gold challenge is the hard mode of the contest for those of you, who seek a more difficult challenge! In order to compete in the gold challenge, you have to beat King's Ridge on Expert difficulty without the use of Amii Monument with a pure deck. You are allowed to use Enlightenment in a pure nature deck, but only to cast nature T4 cards.
There will be separate prices for each pure faction, so you are allowed to compete in all of them at once!
Send me the replay of your fastest attempt via discord or here on the forums. You can find the replays under Documents=>battleforge=>replays.
 
Until when?
The challenge will be held through the entire month of May. Send me your replay(s) via Discord or the forum until Monday, 31st of May 2021 23:59 (11:59 pm). Please only send your quickest and last replay you want to submit for each category.
Please, also send me your current best time (just the time, not the replay) by Sunday, 23rd of May 2021. This is not obligatory in order to submit a final time. I will post these times annonymously, so that everyone can check, how well they are doing up to that point.
 
Prize pool!
Gold challenge:
1st place pure fire  - Batariel (R) + 1 fire booster
2nd place pure fire - Choice between Batariel (P) or Moloch + 1 fire booster
3rd place pure fire - Brannoc + 1 fire booster
4th place pure fire - 1 fire booster
1st place pure shadow  - Shadow Worm + 1 shadow booster
2nd place pure shadow - Grim Bahir (G) + 1 shadow booster
3rd place pure shadow - Moon + 1 shadow booster
4th place pure shadow - 1 shadow booster
1st place pure frost  - Dreadnought + 1 frost booster
2nd place pure frost - Battleship + 1 frost booster
3rd place pure frost - Rogan Kayle + 1 frost booster
4th place pure frost - 1 frost booster
1st place pure nature  - Forest Elder (G) + 1 nature booster
2nd place pure nature - Forest Elder (P) + 1 nature booster
3rd place pure nature - Viridya + 1 nature booster
4th place pure nature - 1 nature booster
Silver challenge:
1st place - 2000 BfP
2nd place - 1000 BfP
3rd place - 750 BfP
4th-6th place - 350 BfP
7th-10th place - 250 BfP
Final Standings
 
FAQ
Can I compete in both the silver and gold challenge?
Yes, you can! In fact, you can submit up to five replays - One for the silver challenge and one for each faction in the gold challenge.
Are neutral cards allowed in the gold challenge?
Yes, neutral cards, such as Rogan Kayle, Viridya and Earth Crystal are allowed. The only banned neutral card is the Amii Monument.
What version of the map is this challenge on?
Version 0.8
Where can I find the winning replays?
The replay files are attached to this post. Also, you can watch the VOD on my twitch.
The winning replays can all be found in this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOGMzVQue-AZ492AxuxAuqeHufqGkhHUm
The winning replays will also be streamed on my twitch channel on Friday, June 4th!
 
Big thanks to @Emmaerzeh and @Toggy for helping me with designing this challenge and to the devs for sponsoring the price pool!
I hope you enjoy this challenge and I am looking forward to several cool replays!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them either here or per PM to me.
Greetings,
Metagross31
Community Challenge Nr3 replays.zip

Greetings Skylords!
We are happy to bring you the first official community update, a biweekly update to give you an overview of whats happening (and going to happen) in Skylords Reborn. We have heard your desire for communication loud and clear, and as your fresh Community Manager, I will do my best to deliver. 
The goal of these updates is to give you an idea of the things going on behind the scenes and cool stuff that you might have missed. Not every update will have the same content, but we hope to provide you with some cool details and insights. 
Without further ado, lets get to it!
Balance Patch #2
What better way to start than with a new patch announcement! Balance Patch #2 is hitting the live servers soon, bringing with it a lot of PvP balance changes and map updates. We have decided to wait with the release until Toggy's PvE contest is finished to not cause issues for the contenders. You can expect the patch to go live at the beginning of May. The patch notes will be posted soon. 
In-game Tournament tab
Once logged in, you will now be greeted with a tab showing upcoming tournaments and events in Skylords Reborn. Full event details will still be posted on the forums, but we hope this will help tournament organisers with spotlighting their events. 

We would like to take this moment to point out we are still looking for an Event Manager. If you are up for the task, please apply! Check our Open Staff Positions for more information.
Upcoming Community Tournaments
There is a 1v1 tournament hosted by Toggy this saturday. Because we had to delay the patch, it will be played on the test-server.  

Toggy is also giving PvE players a challenge with his speedrunning contest of the map Ocean. 

Both tournaments will reward booster prices. 
PvE
Don't worry PvE players, you are not forgotten. We are not ready to bring you a PvE patch just yet, but rest assured that a lot of work is put into improving the PvE experience. 
There have been a lot of heated arguments in the forum and the discord about what the ideal PvE scene should look like. We will release a philosophy document in the near future explaining our stance on certain topics and what you can expect from the balance team going forward. We cant share any details yet, but WindHunter will soon be in touch with you with more information. 
Balance Discord
Most of you might be aware, but alongside the regular discord we have a discord specifically focused on balancing PvE and PvP. You are encouraged to discuss potential changes and ideas with us here. 
Card Description Project
You might have noticed that cards in Battleforge aren't always very consistent or clear. A group of volunteers has started the huge undertaking to fix this. Not only are they clearing up sentences and details for every single card, they are also adding relevant hidden information like gender (girl-power anyone?), abilities, movement speed, a better reflection of a cards true damage output and much much more. Here is an example:

  *please note this is a mockup and not final yet
With hundreds of cards this might take a while before you see this in game, but I wanted to mention it already. I'm truly baffled by all the hours people put into this project behind the scene. If you want to help out with this project, they are currently in need of a French translator. If you know anyone, please reach out to them via the Description Changes Discord.
Map Testers
Some new map testers are helping us out with the project as well. They have already been a great help and we are grateful for their time. Thank you cswordmaster, LEBOVIM, LegitNacho, Liorans, Mister_Mv, Perthos and Wanky [CH][Ger]. 
New Team Members
To those who missed the announcements, we added two new members to the team in the past weeks. 
Going forward I will be your community manager and will be in charge of keeping the community updated on the latest information, while also making sure suggestions and concerns from the community reach the developers.
Tweeto has also joined the team as a 2D artist. He has already created two beautiful artworks for Amii Phantom and a possible new Amii card. We will have a staff meeting soon to get him underway to create even more awesome artwork. If you are interested in seeing how his artwork comes to live, we can also share that kind of information in the future. 
  
 
We still have some open positions on our team to help with the project. We are looking for map artists, designers, discord moderators and more. Please have a look at the Open Staff Positions for more open positions and information on how to apply!
Twitter and Facebook 
Are you following us on Twitter and Facebook already? They have been inactive for a while, but I have heard from a very reliable source that going over there might be.. rewarding for you. Expect us to use those channels to keep you updated from now on as well. 
In conclusion
And that's it for your very first Community Update! Just to set expectations: we definitely wont be releasing a new patch with every update and some weeks will have more news than others. 
In future updates, we would also like to take a moment to give some information on what we can and can't do in the game, and what a realistic flow of content will be. As you might have noticed, we have added quite a few members to the team lately and in the past week I have been absolutely blown away by all the work that is being done behind the scenes. I look forward to sharing more with you in the future.  
What do you guys think of this first biweekly status update? Is there something you would want to see covered more? We are open to feedback so please let us know. 
 

A summary of this announcement is written at the bottom.

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and other Skyfolk!

Over the past two months project progression has considerably slowed down and it has become apparent that the community is in need of a status update. This announcement aims to provide said status update, where we discuss what has happened the past few months, what the current status of the project is, what some of the roadblocks are and how we plan to alleviate them, what we are currently focusing on and what our plans and expectations are to move forward. We also take a more in-depth look at the current roadmap for new cards and card balancing, and newly added staff members.
General project state and current plans
Let us start by going back more or less 1 year. At that moment @Ladadoos and @Zyna were still only client developers and the only server developer, Kubik, had just left us. With no foreseeable new server developer and the server being in a very unstable state, Ladadoos and Zyna decided to step up and become server and client developers. For the next few months they worked many hours per day to fix as many game related issues as possible and bring the gaming experience to an enjoyable state so that Skylords Reborn could finally release. This lead to the project reaching an unsustainably high update throughput, likely giving false expectations for parts of the community for the future. Just before the project released the only two administrators, InsaneHawk and MrXLink, also stepped down from their role. The lack of a leading role started to show and considering Ladadoos and Zyna had the most involvement in the project at the time they stepped up to also become administrators. As a step in the process of re-structuring the team and improving work efficiency, we noticed that there was a clear need for extra designers. Game design has always been behind and with release coming, we needed to finish design decisions quickly. That is when @ImaginaryNumb3r joined which helped immensely and, alongside other designers, we were able to get game design to an acceptable state for release. 
On December 18th, 2020 Skylords Reborn released. With this milestone achieved we decided to shift more of our attention to ensuring our servers properly handle the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of concurrent players and to start implementing our first ever card balance changes! With the help of ImaginaryNumb3r, Zyna and the discord balancing server we released our first big card balance change on 1st of January, 2021. This was followed by a couple of extra updates, after which the project progression greatly decreased. ImaginaryNumb3r had to spontaneously spend a lot more time at his real-life job and Zyna and Ladadoos had to catch up with university duties like bachelor and master thesis. In the meantime other staff members have also had it busier than usual.
This leads us to where we are now. Two months without game updates and a community without a clear idea of the current state of the project. In the past few weeks we have internally discussed project health and team structure and decided to use the little time we currently still have into adding more team members to the project and improving code and workflow documentations. This process takes a lot of time which unfortunately comes at the cost of even slower game progression. Ever since we made our open staff applications page we have had many new applications come in and a lot of time has been spent processing them. Our goal is to expand the team such that we try to minimize the chances the project hits a complete halt again and as a result you can expect the team to grow in the upcoming weeks/months. We recently also added three new roles (discord moderators, community manager and event organizer) alongside the existing ones, which should improve the current project state. Feel free to have a look!
Faction design and new staff members
That being said, today we are most happy to announce the future for card balancing and potential new cards in Skylords Reborn. To us, card balance is of critical importance to provide new experiences and allow for greater deck building freedom in the game. To accelerate this process we are proud to announce that we have established a team of 5 people which are dedicated to improve the overall gameplay and deckbuilding experience.
With the introduction of this new team, we have created 2 new official titles:
 - Faction Designer: They explore the design space for card changes and create specifications which will be implemented.
 - Balance Developer: They implement features which were designed by Faction Designers or fix bugs of different sorts. They will also help map making in the future by adding new map specific units like bosses.
In other words: faction designers design the cards and balance developers implement them.
The team consists of the following members:
- @RadicalX: Faction Designer with PvP focus
- @WindHunter: Faction Designer with PvE focus
- @Chibiterasu: Balance Developer
- @Razeroc: Balance Developer
- @ImaginaryNumb3r: Lead Faction Designer
Expectations and steps moving forward
Experience has shown that working on balance and faction design is too work intense for just one developer at a time. As such, it goes without saying that you can expect more frequent balance iterations with card changes which won't only address balance, but also bugfixes and quality-of-life changes. Furthermore, we want to use our new resources for improved communication and greater transparency in terms of card and faction design.
Card changes are important steps to make the game more fun, but because there are so many ways one can adjust cards good design is everything. For PvE in particular our ultimate goal is to strengthen the identity of each faction (pure elements and hybrid factions) and give them their own signature playstyles. But for now, our efforts are best spend on cards which don't require a mechanical rework to make viable (like the Mutating Maniac buff). And for PvP, our new development resources allow our expert group (a group of hand-picked community members that help with design) to make faster progress and make more tests. In the future you can expect more detailed short and long-term goals for card balancing.
That is it for now. Thanks for your continued support the past few months and we look forward to what the future brings us!

Summary
Developers and designers are very busy with real-life jobs and university. New open staff roles were made here as an attempt to keep the project progressing. These rules include discord moderators, community manager, event organizer, developers, designers etc. A lot of time is currently spent reviewing applications and making it easier to integrate new staff members. @Chibiterasu and @Razeroc were recently added to staff and are responsible to implement card changes designed by the new faction designers @RadicalX and @WindHunter. This should greatly speed up card/faction balancing.

Keep calm, there are a lot of players that loves the free decks like they are, of course they dont come here to complain. Just look at the rankings and count the players with PVErank 0. You know 10 people complaining on the forum aren't the majority? I personally don't know what the majority thinks but i hate your way of making aggressive assumptions and accusations.

Glad you like it!

That's correct. From all units I tested, none have shown similar properly.
Thank you for finding another card with same bug, though.

Thats incorrect. Mountaineer for example will splash to air units.
 

Hello everyone.
I'll keep it short. Past few months, I've been working on our web API that is completely public and available for everyone to use. I've also created simple, functional (but stylistically not very pretty) user interfaces that visualize and consume the said API.
User interface applications are open-sourced on my GitHub. The repository also contains complete instructions on how to consume the API yourselves, if you were to decide to create your own frontend applications. But, you have to be somewhat profficient in web development to understand and begin doing stuff on your own. 
Issues tab is to be used freely for any and all suggestions and bug reports.
Pull Requests that improve and extend the existing UIs are more than welcome. After manual review, they might get merged into the master branch and appear as a part of the next website update. 
Links:
GitHub repository: https://github.com/fiki574/Skylords-Reborn-API-UI Statistics: https://stats.skylords.eu/ Auctions: https://auctions.skylords.eu/ Leaderboards: https://leaderboards.skylords.eu/ All applications are caching data periodically, so you're actually "querying" the in-memory data, and not the database directly, which does not have any kind of impact on the game servers and database itself. Have in mind these applications are also the first version, they will definetly get improved and extended, as well as the API.
For some of you, these applications and the API open up whole lot of possibilities.
For example, now you could create an application that tracks the average price of every card and makes a nice graph. You could even extend the search options with card orbs, expansion, rarity, etc. 
Or you could create an application that tracks all auctions for a specific card and sends you a mail or push notification when a card appears on the auction house, but is equal or below the specified price.
Average concurrent players/matches graph could be visualized by querying the Statistics API every 2/5/X minutes.
Those of you who understood everything said and know what you're doing, will use this to its maximum potential.
Have fun!

Hey, 

Im planning to start streaming my ladder games again. 
I didnt rly play much lately, and Im still rusty as hell, but i still want to share my progress with u and maybe we can help eachother improving.
I'll most likely stream in german, but im not sure yet. Even if im talking german, all who dont speak german, are welcome too, for any english questions or conversation ill switch to english, so dont worry about that. 

Whenever I am going to start streaming, ill post it here and let you know that im live. 
The first stream should be whether today or tomorrow, ill tell you in time. 

Here you get to my stream

Im looking forward to see you guys in the chat.

Hi,
back in 2009 I made a ReplayAnalyzertool with a friend.
Just found it (still looking for the sourcecode, i'll share should I find it again).

It features playerinfos(deck, apm etc. ), a replay browser, a basic replay function outside of skylords and the possibility to rename your replays (on buttonpress or automatically) from autosave to something that will be kept and includes maps/playername.

have fun:
http://torsten-lueders.de/replayanalyzer/skylords_replay_analyzer.zip 
( You will need a Java runtime for the tool and it still misses the maps and cards of "newest" Edition (Lost Units etc.) that will be displayed as unknown card. )

The falso also includes a command line tool (/parser) to get jsondata (orbs, played cards, winner, apm etc. ) from replays.
Used it on my webserver for a replay database and on a battleforge turney page to detect the winner(bfleague.com).
Works on Linux and Windows but you need a (v)server with commandline for it so you can install java and execute the command line.
Feel free to use it.

Fellow Skylords and Cute Beings,
As second person to ever complete “Among the Old Gods” achievement in Battleforge, I started using title “The Old God of Battleships”. As we learn from King of the World himself, best way of starting a cult is being friendly and helpful. Therefore I wish you will enjoy this read, aimed at providing you with both comprehensive and powerful knowledge.

 
Introduction

The thread is aimed at players who struggle with Among the Old Gods. In order to complete the achievement, you have to win all campaign missions on expert difficulty. You will be rewarded generously in 8 General Boosters. Many maps have different exploits and tricks that may make the map trivial – however, as they feel unfair, require particular cards and may be removed by developers, they are not covered here.
Deck choice usually is irrelevant when it comes to expert difficulty. The important aspect is to specialise your deck for each map, and prepare it for particular threats you may encounter. On my first playthrough I have completed the campaign with  Pure Frost deck, as it is my favourite faction. It was before first balance patch, so back then all factions were weaker and had lower amount of viable cards. Pure Fire still may struggle with the achievement, nonetheless, overall you should be able to finish the campaign with your favourite PvE faction. There is no need to sacrifice fun for playing meta, as there is no “the only correct way” – the only limits are in your head.
 
Approach is important
Expert is not meant to be easy.
Try, lose, improve.
This is how humans become better – by making mistakes and learning from them. Thanks to the guide, you can learn on my mistakes and significantly decrease amount of necessary tries to complete the achievement. Pay attention to which enemies you will face, what is their position, weak points and how to exploit the situation. Check map topography to quickly reach Power Wells and intercept enemy attacks. Learn attack timings and understand triggers. [1] Be prepared and do not leave anything to a chance. You will come across problems – enemy attack too strong to deal with, restricted access to cards or monuments, mechanics that doesn’t work like you expected.
 
[1]. Trigger is a condition that starts a particular event. For example in Behind Enemy Lines if you destroy any of spawners that are nearby your Tier 2 locations, enemy waves will become significantly stronger and use specialised units. Keeping spawners alive allows you to explore the map and prepare defence in a more relieved way.
 
Explore. Adapt. Overcome.
There are many cards in Battleforge that are neglected and overlooked, as they are not as flexible as the most popular choices. If someone told me I would be using Icefang Raptor to complete Ocean, or pre-rework Sunken Temple to win Soultree with Pure Nature, I would laugh, as those cards seemed worthless to me. I was wrong, niche cards are awesome in niche situations. When you will start looking for solutions, you will notice those little gems in your collection.
If you are looking for something cheap and solid, you may want to check @Weak1ings ‘s deck, as he was the first person to complete Among the Old Gods, he used an affordable flexible meta deck.
 
Weak1ings' deck:
 
Make sure to use what you already have to forge your path to victory, possibly in an unique way. Amii Monument may make many missions easier – however, it is easy to get lazy because of it, and majority of maps are difficult due to situations that happen before you reach Tier 3.  
 
Progress Track

 
Accessing Replays
 
Maps are in separate posts
1 player maps are in this post. 2 player maps are in post 2 posts below. 4 player maps are in post 6 posts below. 12 player maps are in post 8 posts below.  
One Player Maps 9/9
 
Encounters with Twilight

 
Siege of Hope

 
Defending Hope


The Soultree

 
The Treasure Fleet


Mo

Ocean
Oracle
Behind Enemy Lines
I will try to improve style and review errors at some point, and also introduce more maps.
List of many guides across the forum by @Eirias.
Larger base of Youtube videos by @MephistoRoss.
Here only replays for 1 player maps are available. Check other posts to find 2, 4 and 12 player maps.
Siege of Hope Expert.pmv Behind Enemy Lines Expert.pmv Defending Hope Expert.pmv Ocean Expert.pmv Oracle Expert.pmvThe Treasure Fleet Expert.pmv Soultree Speedrun.pmv Mo Expert.pmv Behind Enemy Lines Expert Shadow.pmv Defending Hope Expert Shadow.pmv The Treasure Fleet Expert Metagross.pmv
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
The rookies have battled it out and we have a winner! Congratulations to Mirosius for winning the Skylords Rookies#1!

 
You will receive your boosters within the next week, I will send the BFP until tomorrow.
Big thank you to the mods for helping and the devs for sponsoring!
 
Greetings,
Toggy

Back to business - new all time-record drawen-riddle 05.9.4: